Andrej Karpathy departs from OpenAI once more — but he denies any conflict

Andrej Karpathy, a renowned research scientist, revealed today that he has quit OpenAI. This is the second time Karpathy has exited the top AI firm and his departure is not due to any event, issue or drama, he said.

Karpathy, a founding member of OpenAI, first left the company to join Tesla in 2017. He quit Tesla, where he headed the autopilot team, in 2022 and returned to OpenAI almost a year ago. Karpathy has also gained a huge following on social media and YouTube, sharing insightful writings on the emerging space and videos that illustrate the inner workings of AI.

“Hi everyone yes, I quit OpenAI yesterday. First of all nothing “happened” and it’s not a consequence of any specific event, issue or drama (but please keep the conspiracy theories coming as they are highly amusing :)),” Karpathy said.

“Actually, being at OpenAI over the last ~year has been really awesome – the team is really solid, the people are wonderful, and the roadmap is very thrilling, and I think we all have a lot to look forward to. My immediate plan is to work on my personal projects and see what happens. Those of you who’ve followed me for a while may have an idea of what that might look like.”

  • Karpathy’s exit, first revealed by The Information, comes after a turbulent year at OpenAI where Sam Altman was temporarily removed as the CEO before being restored in a dramatic week. The company informed TechCrunch that Karpathy’s role was handed over to another researcher, who remained unnamed.

“Andrej is leaving to work on personal projects. We are immensely thankful for his contributions and wish him the best. His responsibilities have shifted to a senior researcher who collaborated closely with Andrej,” a spokesperson said in a statement.

Karpathy’s X bio, which has been updated, said “building kind of a J.A.R.V.I.S at @OpenAI,” implying that he was involved in a project related to AI Assistants at the company.

Earlier this year, he clarified the reason behind writing this. He said that he wanted to write a term to describe a helpful and conversational AI.

“I use JARVIS in general terms only, as one of my favorite popular depictions of an AI – a helpful, conversational, empowering e/ia automation. A helper against evil and entropy,” he said.

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